Regarding diesel, it's important to remember that it was a byproduct of oil refinery that had to be used somehow (instead of being discarded and trashed in the nearby river). Some industrial engines and boats have been designed to use it (and are actually better run on diesel engines). Diesel car engine also became a thing, but was originally emitting more small particles. Specific catalytic converters have been introduced to remove those particles decades ago, with very high efficiency (95+%). Those converters are alas not so efficient at lower speed. That's why we don't want too many diesel cars in our cities.

[1] https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/J...

That isn’t correct, because electric cars mostly use regenerative braking which eliminates brake emissions. Also, this is only for particulates, NOx also emissions are totally eliminated by the switch.

[2] https://electricautonomy.ca/2019/09/11/better-braking-anothe...

Back in college a few years ago I wrote a paper trying to compare the environmental cost of maintaining and operating 90s cars vs buying and replacing electric car batteries measured by co2 emitted (typically written co2e). This was written around 2012 but I found the break even around 10 years. That is, electric cars were measured as a fairly flat line (not fully flat, assuming some non zero co2e for electricity generation). There was of course a ton of hand waiving but the gas car was assumed to have a y intercept near zero and to be operated for 10 or 15k miles/year (can't remember exactly but I know it was in that range). I would link it but I'm currently not in the same country as the hard drive that might still have a copy of it. Of course I would prefer to have a peer reviewed publication on this, but I had a lot of trouble researching the manufacturing/mining estimates back when I wrote it.

For some reason, people are particularly hostile to countervailing evidence when it contradicts previously swallowed feelgood propaganda.

Edit: 'Using the average CO2 output of the European electricity network, Ernst concluded that an electric car using a 60kWh battery made in Europe would have to travel some 700,000 kilometres (435,000 miles) before it is “greener than an average petrol car”. However, Ernst also says that a fully renewable European grid would reduce the EV’s CO2 lag to just 30,000km (18,640 miles). '

https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/industry/analysis-just-ho...

Also if you want to trust basic balance sheet economics, a Prius is cheaper than than Jeep Wrangler. 'splain that.

"...or my friend's 2009 VW?" When speaking of emissions output, I find it amusing that your anecdata involves a Volkswagen diesel.

This also then led to newer models emitting finer particulate which was more easily picked up by the wind and could travel into the lungs more easily instead of denser particulate which fell to the roadside.

Or, fortunately as it turned out. "Clean" diesel is a public health disaster in Europe. The US dodged a bullet by not jumping on that bandwagon.

The US just didn't provide the incentives to push people to buy them due to their efficiency. We pretty much said "yeah, keep driving that F-150".

It turned out that fuel economy was not the only important thing to consider. You could say we lucked into not increasing diesel adoption.

(I own a diesel vehicle with SCR, and an petrol engined vehicle, and an EV)